


Mirror Marching

by Gehayi



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Bring Back Black, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Escape, Gen, Literally Through the Looking Glass, Looking Glass, Mirrors, Multi, Passing Mention of Threesome, Potions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9665072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/pseuds/Gehayi
Summary: Regulus is eager to escape to anywhere that isn't Voldemort's England--even if it means a trip through the looking glass to an unknown destination.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oneill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneill/gifts).



The story that Regulus leaves behind--of being overwhelmed by Inferi until he drowns--is a lie. A blatant lie, for half of it takes place after the house-elf relaying the story allegedly dematerialized. There's no way that Kreacher could know that he was dead. Regulus wonders if any wizard will notice the discrepancy, and then laughs a trifle bitterly. Of course they won't. Most wizards don't bother with things like logic. 

That still leaves the question of where to flee, though, and he isn't impressed by any of the prospects. Voldemort has always declared that he intends to take over the Wizarding World, and Regulus has not the faintest doubt that the Dark Lord will do his level best to succeed. The bastard might even do it. It's not as if most wizards take Voldemort _seriously_.

Seventeen days and thirty-four minutes after his supposed demise, in an ancient, crumbling book in the family library, he finds one.

***

It's a very, very old book, half written in Welsh and half in Latin, and all describing spells the like of which he's never seen before. Even so, Regulus is only flipping casually through the pages when he reads a chapter heading that says: _Ffyrdd i Byd Arall_. Which means, as best he can translate, _Roads to Another World_. Or _Other Ways to a World_.

Either way, it offers a way out. Regulus ransacks the shelves, looking for a Welsh dictionary and begins the painstaking process of translating.

It takes weeks, which flenses his nerves. But he keeps at it until he learns what he needs to know.

Ultimately, it's very simple. Mirrors are doors. And with the right incantation and the right potion, you can open the door in that mirror and walk through the door onto a long, narrow, winding road. Where it will lead is not certain. Numerous destinations are mentioned: Polythreme, the Iron Republic, the Carnelian Coast, Parabola, the Cave of the Nadir. There are countless spells to ensure that a traveler not travel north, especially not in search of a long-lost name. All of them warn that anyone who walks down the mirror road will not easily return to the fields they know.

But to Regulus, that only means that Voldemort will not be able to pull him back to the Wizarding World with ease--if at all. And if he does not return to Wizarding England, is that really so different from emigrating? For him, the advantages seem well worth the risk.

He casts many spells, all designed to shrink his extra clothing, money and magical accoutrements so that he can carry everything he needs most in his pocket. And he brews a potion, a black and silver potion with which to wash the surface of a mirror and open the door which lies concealed within.

At last--four months after his supposed death--everything is ready. He has everything he needs. Now it's time to leave.

He Apparates to Hogsmeade, steals the boat that normally transports first-years to Hogwarts, and chooses a secret passage that puts him near McGonagall's Transfiguration classroom--empty when he arrives, mercifully--and then makes his way from there to the equally empty Astronomy Tower. Un-enchanted mirrors and lenses are needed for astronomy. Regulus is taking no chances on his spells and potions interacting badly with an ensorcelled mirror.

It takes little time for him to find the right kind of mirror; the difficulty lies in finding one that is relatively near the floor. At last he chooses an immense oval leaning against the wall near the back of the tower; it is well polished and ready for use as part of a telescope, but has not yet been placed in position. Perfect.

Quickly, he paints its gleaming surface with the silver and black potion and recites three spells: one to keep the mirror steady and unmoving before, during and after he steps into it; a second that opens a passageway to an unnamed country in the mirror; and a third that will erase all traces of the passageway spell once he embarks on his journey.

The mirror yawns open. It resembles a huge, black cave...or a mouth. For a moment--more than a moment, to be honest--Regulus hesitates. Then he draws his wand and says, in a voice that is only trembling a little, " _Lumos._ "

The light from the spell fills the land beyond the mirror, showing a winter wood filled with petrified trees and a vaguely glimmering path.

Placing his right food firmly on the path, Regulus steps forward.

***

The journey is a long and disorienting one. Once he steps off the path--and he does this more than once, because he can't always see it--he finds himself lost in a steamily hot maze of oddly marked trees, vines with eyes, and orchids entwined around mirror frames of brass, silver, iron and ivory. The mirrors in those frames don't reflect him. They don't seem to reflect anything.

He investigates ruined temples whose intricate friezes are still barely visible in places; he follows running streams that cool him and clear his head. He spends days talking to panthers with fur like black oil who want to know where he came from, sun-dappled leopards who ask if this is his first time in the Marches, and lionesses who state firmly that someone is fighting a war with fire and water. Night in this strange jungle is as cool as the days are hot, and the bluish-white moon resembles nothing so much as a sleeping white Angora cat. 

He's never certain how he leaves the Mirror-Marches. One day he thinks he sees something in an orchid-entangled mirror, steps forward to peer at it, and trips...

And the next thing he knows, the Marches are gone, and he's gripping the balloon of a flying airship for dear life.

The airship docks quickly. But before Regulus can be more than marginally grateful for that, a burly pilot climbs up, drags him off the balloon to a tower, and starts shouting for constables. Something about interfering with the Traitor Empress's mail. Regulus tries to explain that he doesn't know what's going on or who the Traitor Empress even is, but that only angers the pilot more.

"And stop waving that club in my face!" he snaps, snatching Regulus's wand from his hand, breaking it in two, and then tossing the scraps away.

Regulus lunges for the remnants of his wand. The idea of living here--or anywhere--without a wand is intolerable. Maybe he can repair it; maybe he can find a wandmaker who can fix it for him.

It doesn't occur to him that the pilot might interpret his lunge as an attack.

A beefy fist swings toward him...and then there's only blackness.

He awakes in a dripstone cell in the stalactite known as New Newgate Prison, his memory completely gone.

***

It doesn't take him long to realize that he's not going to get out of here if he doesn't break out. He doesn't know much about himself, but he knows that being trapped, in prison or out of it, is an old horror of his and that he has to escape _now._

After charming some tools from the guard (who makes him think of a troll, for some reason) and leaping out of his cell onto a supply dirigible (isn't this roughly why he was imprisoned in the first place?), he makes his way to the Bazaar and sells his chains and manacles. They only garner a few pence, which troubles him more than a little; he knows that he brought a great deal with him. But everything that he owned was in his pockets, and his clothes--his _Surface_ clothes--were taken from him at New Newgate Prison.

Until he can afford clothes that do not scream "prison rags," he alternates between Watchmaker's Hill, where he can hunt small but deadly things for money, and Spite, where he can steal small things for money. He befriends the urchins of Spite, who are only a few years younger than himself (but centuries ahead in survival instinct) and the Cheery Man, the crime lord who owns the Watchmaker's Hill tavern known as the Medusa's Head and, in fact, Watchmaker's Hill itself. He collects moon-pearls and glim and nevercold brass silver and rostygold, whispered hints, cryptic clues, drops of prisoner's honey, and bottles of mushroom wine. It doesn't take long before he can afford poor but respectable clothing and, more importantly, lodgings with a Soft-Hearted Widow.

He signs the rental agreement "Reginald Arthur Blake." It's not quite right; he knows that. But it feels close.

It is only when he signs the rental agreement that he learns the year here in Fallen London: 1880.

***

A year passes. Reginald--now "Reg" to almost everyone who knows him--has been, by turns, a tough, an enquirer, a pickpocket and (he blushes at the thought of this) a minor poet. He has learned all he can about menace, observation, slyness and charm from those. He needs to adopt a permanent profession; nothing in this city is free.

Perhaps something in his dreams suggests this; perhaps it is only the shadow of an old memory tugging at him. But then he reads these words in a proscribed book:

_The Glassman changes the course of events with truth and lies. […] Theirs are the hidden arts by which the Gallery of Serpents was made. They have ventured into the Marches beyond the sight of all glass, and uncovered the source of the Writhing River._

Serpents. Hidden arts. The Marches beyond the sight of all glass. It all sounds very...familiar.

But becoming a Glassman is not easy. He must become a Mystic before he becomes a Glassman, and a Campaigner before he becomes a Mystic. And Campaigners, who try to improve the city, are strongly tied to the Church, which Reginald has never bothered with. 

He hesitates for a bit; there is something about "trying to improve things" that stirs unpleasant emotions in his mind, as if he had tried it once before and everything had gone quite badly wrong. Back on the Surface, he supposes, in the world that he barely remembers. Nor does he like the notion of having a Crowd of Feckless Supporters as his constant companions.

But there is something so thoroughly tempting about being a Glassman. And at last he assents.

***

Another year passes, then two more. Reg has, by now, become quite good as a campaigner. He has also had more than a few love affairs (including one with a Struggling Artist who resembles a mustachioed male Weasley, a dark-haired, dark-eyed Artist's Model, a Honey-Sipping Heiress, a Honey-Sipping Jewel Thief--not the same person as the Heiress--and a charming threesome with a Melancholy Curate and his adopted Sister). He has become the toast of society, is now admitted to the Shuttered Palace, has met the Traitor Empress and her daughter, the Captivating Princess, and is currently involved with an Acclaimed Beauty (a tall, exceptionally handsome man with dark skin and high cheekbones) and a Barbed Wit (a brilliant redheaded woman with striking, if not beautiful, looks, and politics that are considered radical here in Fallen London). 

He also now owns a Swift Zee-Clipper--the sea is always called the zee or the Unterzee here in Fallen London, just as sailors are "zailors" and submarines are "zubmarines." He has sailed to Hunter's Keep and met three women who may or may not be moon goddesses, to the strange community known as Mutton Island that guards a well that may be a prison, to Polythreme, where everything, even your own clothing, is sapient and has a voice, and to the disorienting Iron Republic, colony of Hell.

The Iron Republic left its mark on him, physically and mentally. He still has his soul, but some manner of scar has been left on it. When he glances at his shaving mirror, he can see the Iron Republic's mark in his pale grey eyes.

He's not sure if that mark is why he now remembers who he is. Perhaps his restored memory is something of a joke to Hell. In any case, he knows now who he was once: Regulus Arcturus Black.

He considers whether or not to change his name, and then decides against it. He came here, after all, to disappear. 

And, though he's loath to admit it, he likes the quiet competence of Reginald Arthur Blake much better.

***

Three more years pass, years in which Reg takes up lecturing at Benthic and Summerset, composing an opera (which shocks the Empress, who bars her court, though not the Shuttered Palace, to him henceforward), founds a somewhat irregularly published newspaper on Doubt Street, plumbs the origins of the squid-faced Rubbery Men by travelling to the depths of Fluke Street, takes up archaeology in the Forgotten Quarter of London, explores the perilous menagerie known as Labyrinth of Tigers (which is actually run _by_ talking tigers--shades of the Mirror Marches), takes up espionage in Wilmot's End, and joins the Foreign Office, where he meets an elegant young lady acting as Cultural Attachée. They hit it off splendidly, and soon various bishops whom he's got to know in the course of his campaigning are urging him to wed the young lady. This seems like an extremely good idea to him. He has never heard of any married Mystics before, but he's quite willing to be the first.

She happily agrees, and they marry.

He cannot help wishing on the day of his wedding (which is also his twenty-sixth birthday--society marriages take a while to arrange) that his brother could see him now. It would be nice to go back to the Surface and introduce his lovely lady to Sirius. But that is impossible. He has died a number of times here in Fallen London, as has she. And while Death does not have quite the grasp on those who dwell in the Neath that it does above, it does not permit those who have died here even once to return to the Surface. And of course there is no guarantee that any message he sent to his brother would end up in the correct universe, much less that the messenger would find its way back home.

He had planned on disappearing, and he really can't think of a better way of vanishing than moving to another universe. He'd never thought that he'd miss anyone or wonder what was going on back in Voldemort's England.

It would be 1988 back there, not 1888. He wonders if Sirius is still alive, if Remus Lupin is still working undercover as a spy among the Dark Lord's werewolf allies, if Peter Pettigrew has found some way of letting his friends know that he's the world's most terrified double agent.

And then he hears the Teeth--a musically gifted political faction of the Foreign Office--singing like angels are said to sing as a Rubbery Woman plays the bridal march. As the Cultural Attachée glides up the aisle of St. Paul's toward him, Reg finds that thinking of anything but _her_ is blessedly impossible.

***

Shortly after his marriage, Reg becomes both a Mystic (losing his Feckless Supporters but gaining a Circle of Acolytes who are more persuasive, more dangerous and more respectable) and the Governor of the Carnelian Coast. _Only in the Neath._ He does his level best to be a good and honorable governor, despite his Death Eater background, and to keep both the talking tigers and the Khanagians happy, healthy, and unwilling to kill him.

This is not an exaggeration.

He serves seven years as a governor--quite a respectable length of time. The Cultural Attachée, in between her running all things related to culture and espionage, bears him three children: Samuel (for her father), Minnie (short for "Minerva," which is her sister's name), and Alfred (a bishop's mishearing of "Alphard"). 

But by the end of their seventh term--and Reg considers it a joint governorship, though the Cultural Attachée pooh-poohs this notion--both of them are homesick. Reg also thinks that he might be able to qualify as a Glassman now, while the Cultural Attachée has long nursed an Ambition to hunt a batlike monster known as the Vake. It's likewise time for Samuel, now six, to start attending school, and both Reg and his wife are unwilling to send him far from the Southern Archipelago and across the Broad Unterzee to London all alone. Not to mention that Minnie, at four, doesn't need a nanny; she needs either a genius governess or a school for geniuses. And Alfie--well, Alfie needs a leash. Reg can't imagine any ship that an unaccompanied Alfie is on surviving for very long.

So, for all these reasons, they leave the governor's mansion, Heartscross House, and return to Fallen London. As often happens on the Unterzee, the journey seems to take an eternity (for compasses and navigational charts do not always work as they should on this ocean) and no time at all. Several months must have passed, however, as it was 1895 when the _Orion_ zailed from the Carnelian Coast, and now, if the London papers are to be believed, it is January 1896.

The next few months pass quickly as the Blake family adjusts to a new home, new servants, and a new routine. Then a notice appears in a newspaper--not Reg's paper, but quite good in spite of that dreadful defect--that there will be shroom-hopping contests the next day, and of course anyone who is _anyone_ goes shroom-hopping.

The whole family is riding through Veilgarden on their Ratwork Velocipedes (it's better to wear children out thoroughly before taking them to a dangerous race course, in the Cultural Attachée's opinion) when a thin man in ragged robes falls onto the street out of...well...nowhere.

And Reg Blake feels, against his skin, the tingle of actual magic.

Hardly the first time that he's felt it, here in the Neath. But he knows this magic. He knows it down to his bones.

Hastily, he stops his Velocipede and signals his wife and children to pull over to the side of the road. Then he dismounts, letting the Velocipede fall (and trusting that his wife will interfere with any attempts at theft), and pulls the ragged man out of the path of traffic and toward the rest of the family. 

"Are you all right, Sirius?" he asks, frowning. His brother looks as if he's endured several famines. "And how on Earth did you get here?"

"I'm..." Sirius pauses and squints at Reg. "Regulus? Oh, Merlin's manky beard, I'm dead, aren't I?"

Reg and the Cultural Attachée exchange amused glances. 

"Well," says the Cultural Attachée, "that depends. Have you been on a boat on a very long black river? Have you played chess with a skeleton recently? If the answer to both those questions is no, then the odds are that you haven't died yet."

"She's absolutely right," says Reg, "even if you don't understand what she means. And I'm going to take that confusion as a 'no.' I repeat, how _did_ you come here?"

Sirius continues to study him with suspicion. "What are you doing in Muggle clothes? And where's Voldemort?"

"Dressing as gentlemen dress here in Fallen London," Reg replies with a shrug. "And I haven't the slightest idea where the bl___y b_____d is."

Being able to say carefully censored words with audible gaps is a talent acquired over many years. Sirius gapes at Reg, who takes the opportunity to introduce his wife and children to his long-lost brother.

"I must be hallucinating," Sirius says at last. "One minute I'm dueling with Bellatrix, and the next I'm falling through a curtain in the Department of Mysteries and landing here."

"Sounds like it's some sort of Portkey. I haven't the faintest idea where the other Portkey is, though." Reg rubs his chin. "Look, we've a lot to discuss. Why don't I take you home? You can wash up and I'll call my tailor. You can't go wandering the streets looking like that." The Topsy King--the king of all beggars, who dwells in the Flit--looks better than Sirius does at this moment.

Sirius gives Reg yet another suspicious look, but he agrees with bad grace. Reg looks an apology at the Cultural Attachée; it really isn't fair to leave her alone with their three children. But he can already tell that Sirius is going to want a very thorough explanation of where Reg has been for the past sixteen years.

 _Don't worry about it,_ signs the Cultural Attachée. _But--Regulus?_

 _My old name,_ Reg signs back. _Regulus Arcturus Black. I forgot it for a long time. Reginald Arthur Blake was as close as I could come. I didn't remember my past until after I visited the Iron Republic, and then...there didn't seem to be any point in going back to Regulus. I came here to disappear. Anyway, I liked being Reginald better. Reginald is nicer than Regulus was. And a lot less stupid._

For a moment, the Cultural Attachée is quiet. Then she gives him a softly accepting smile. They'll discuss his past later--Reg knows that--but the smile might as well be "I trust you" written in moonish light across the Neath's cavernous sky.

He gives her a loving hug. Then he plucks the Velocipede out of the hands of an indignant urchin and walks it over to where Sirius is standing. "Come on," he says. "My townhouse is some distance away, but I can tell you a bit about Fallen London en route. And once we get home, you can tell me what's been going on in our universe's England for the past sixteen years or so."

Sirius scowls. "Wait. Two questions. Why did you pretend to be dead?"

"Because I preferred pretending to actually being dead, and the Dark Lord was rather intent on making me the latter. That's the short answer, anyway. The long one will have to wait until we get home. What's the second question?"

"Why didn't you ever come back?"

There are so many answers to that question. _Because I lacked a wand and the potion ingredients I'd need to create a door in a mirror. Because I'm not entirely sure how I got here. Because I died and was barred from returning. Because even before that, I was afraid that if I left Fallen London, I would never find my way back to either the Surface or the Neath. Because I had no desire to live in the fascist regime Voldemort would inevitably create, even for a second. Because I had fucked up my life in the Wizarding World beyond any possibility of recall. Because I never thought, until this minute, that a living soul had missed me._

"Because I'm home," he says finally. "I'm sorry if my faking my death hurt you. I didn't _want_ to hurt you...or anyone. Truthfully, I didn't think anyone would mourn. I was a rotten little tick."

Sirius stares at him, his expression half baffled and half touched. At last he says, his voice gentler than it's been since before his first year at Hogwarts, "You're an idiot."

"Takes one to know one," Reg retorts, a huge, undignified pumpkin grin all over his gentlemanly face. He mounts his Ratwork Velocipede once more. "Come on. You can ride on the handlebars."

It isn't much of an offer, he knows, to a man who may just have lost his entire world. Reg has no clue how to send his brother back where he belongs. But he's done ten thousand impossible things since coming here. Building a bridge across dimensions seems more than plausible.

And speed has always made Sirius feel free.

"Come on, Sirius," he repeats, gesturing toward the handlebars once more. "Let's fly."


End file.
